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Maiden's Puff
Have some paper cups made about as large as a small saucer with a lace fringe around the top; then take an old style champagne glass, one with an oval bottom, wet it, fill it with vanilla ice cream, and place this in the paper cup with the oval side up. Then cut out a piece of orange rind about the size of a half dollar, cut a round hole through this the size of a cherry, place the orange rind in the center of the puff, and lastly place a cherry in the center. You can get the round punches at a harness maker's. Dispensers who are running specials will find this a good thing.
This is an assembly and presentation piece rather than a cooked recipe: a dome of vanilla ice cream unmoulded from a glass and dressed with orange rind and a cherry. Everything hinges on the ice cream releasing cleanly.
- The mouldAn "old style champagne glass with an oval bottom" appears to mean a bowl that is rounded underneath rather than flat-bottomed; the shallow coupe is the likely candidate. Any small rounded bowl of roughly 4-5 oz capacity will give the same shape; a rounded ice cream scoop or a half-sphere silicone mould is the modern equivalent.
- Wetting the glassRinsing the bowl with cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the packed ice cream slide out in one piece. Chill the glass first as well, and pack the ice cream firmly with no air pockets or the dome will collapse when inverted.
- Ice cream temperatureIce cream needs to be firm enough to hold a moulded shape but not rock hard. Modern home freezers run near 0F, so let the carton temper 5-10 minutes before packing, then refreeze the moulded domes hard before serving.
- The paper cupWhat is meant is a flat paper case with a fringed or lace edge, roughly saucer-sized, not a drinking cup. A paper doily on a small plate, or a fluted paper case flattened out, does the same job.
- Size of the rind discA half dollar is about 1 3/16 inches, or 30 mm, across. Cut the orange rind thin, taking as little white pith as possible, since the pith is bitter and stiff and will not sit flat.
- Round punchesHarness makers sold leather punches in graduated sizes; a set of plain round pastry or aspic cutters, or a clean metal piping tip pressed through the rind, cuts the disc and the centre hole just as well. Anything used on food should not have been used on leather.
- The cherryA fountain cherry of this kind would most likely have been a maraschino, by then increasingly a sweetened preserved cherry rather than one steeped in liqueur. A modern maraschino, an Amarena or a brandied cherry all work; drain and blot it so the syrup does not bleed into the ice cream.
- YieldOne glass makes one serving, roughly a half-cup of ice cream. The whole thing is built to order and should go out immediately.
Trade manuals for soda fountain "dispensers" were a small publishing industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their purpose was less culinary than commercial: a druggist with a marble counter needed a rotating list of novelties to advertise as specials. This one adds no flavour at all beyond the vanilla, only a moulded dome, a lace paper collar and a target of orange rind with a cherry at its centre, and the closing line about running specials makes the intent explicit. The instruction to buy round punches from a harness maker is a reminder of how recently the horse trade was the nearest source of ordinary hardware. Names of this sort were decorative rather than descriptive, and rarely traceable to any single inventor.